MYSTERIES OF A JUG

The traditional jug or pitcher, with a round belly, high shoulder and a narrow neck, is one of the most satisfying for the potter and one of the most practical. The full belly, tapering up to the neck and down to a foot of similar width, not only looks good, but also feels good to use. The high shoulder raises the centre of gravity so that the jug is easy to lift when full, and the narrow neck acts as a funnel projecting a stream of liquid away from the lip. Making a lip that doesn’t dribble is a challenge rarely met. I have a factory-made coffee pot with a tiny hole below the hollow spout for the drips to fall back into, a clever device that I’ve not seen repeated. The usual rule is that the lip should have a sharp edge to cut off the flow, but that’s not an absolute guarantee.

The traditional jug is one of those evolved designs, like the traditional bicycle, that it seems impossible to improve on, but aesthetics and fashion drive innovation and there are all sorts of jugs and all sorts of bicycles. Despite my praise of it, I’m not currently making this form because I’m creating a more contemporary look, but I agree with Michael Cardew, who said, “If a thrower can make pitchers well, he will be able to make any other shape. A good pitcher is the most lively and athletic of all pots, realising the conjunction of grace with strength, ready and apt for action yet majestic in repose.”

Proportion is tricky. The eye can discern small differences in proportion, and certain ratios of height to width, and the dimensions of one part of the jug in relation to the others, are immediately satisfying. It’s not easy to explain why, although the most useful guide is the golden ratio, in which the ratio of one dimension to another is the same as the ratio of the larger dimension to their sum, a ratio of about 1.62. But I’ve tended to approach this sort of jug empirically, varying the proportions until they look right – in other words, my approach is subjective and personal and I work on the assumption that what looks right to me will probably look right to most other people as well.

Nevertheless, I’ve tried to analyse what looks good and what doesn’t. Here, (top), are three jugs, similar in shape but slightly different in proportion. To my mind, the one on the left (Jug 1) looks too squat and the one of the right (Jug 3) is too narrow and its neck too tall. The the one in the middle (Jug 2) combines elegance with generosity of form. Why?

The key measurements are the height of the jug, its width at the broadest point, the width of foot (roughly equal to the width of the neck), and the height of the neck. The ratio of each part to the others is shown in the table below.

Rule 1 is suggested by Jug 2, where the ratio of height to width, 1.6, is close to the golden ratio. But the golden ratio is seen nowhere else; the closest is the ratio of width to foot, at 1.8 – good jug makers often make a narrower foot that stands in relation to width closer to the golden ratio. In Jug 3, with the long neck, the width of the foot and the length of the neck are about the same; in Jug 1, the ratio of neck to foot is 1.3, which suggests …Rule 2: the length of the neck should be less than the width of the foot. Rule 3 might be: the width of the neck at its base should be about the same as the width of the foot.

I don’t know whether there are other ratios that people find satisfying, and for the present the proportions of a good jug remain a mystery to me.table,th,td